Turmoil + soul = jazz

So I’m lying in bed, unable to sleep. Some years back. And I’m thinking about money. Not thinking so much as fretting. Probably panicking. So I go downstairs and for some reason stand in front of my bookshelf, looking up at the books I hadn’t looked at or considered or opened for a long time. …

Accidental presence

It’s been months since Darlene died, and yet when I come across her words, such as those lingering on old Facebook posts, I’m surprised every time by how palpable the love is in them — more potent now by far than when they first appeared. I’ve never experienced this before. I’ve heard others talk excitedly about …

I Am Easy To Find: A soundtrack to my latest long night

It's been difficult to know all week whether I've been depressed or just perpetually hungover. Which seems like the perfect emotional backdrop for a new album release from The National. The National are my ultimate "do I accidentally take too many pills/just listen to some music" kind of band. My darkest times of the past …

What’s love got to do with it: Theology and its defences against the dark arts

Towards the end of my very brief career as a theologian in a conservative, fundamentalist, NZ theological college, I had come to the sad realisation that theology, as an academic discipline, is unable — incapable rather than unwilling — to say things about love that art, even in its most popular forms, is more naturally …

A Queen story: You buggers can sing harder than I can

Bohemian Rhapsody was the first song I remember being aware of as a kid. I have a clear memory of us kids singing it in the schoolyard and making up lyrics because, clearly, no one knew what the actual words were. Those memories are filed alongside other powerful ones from the time: the smell of …

One Tree Hill: A conversation with Scruff

The cuttings of Scruff's extraordinary life are stuffed into a fat, brown leather wallet, along with his personal documents, references, some photos and books. Anything that's been written about Scruff, by anyone, at any time over the past few decades, is in this file. His personal library. It's so full the zip barely closes. It …

Tortured innocence: The year was 1984

We emigrated to Perth, Western Australia, in July, 1983. We left the UK, four of us (mum, dad, brother and me), plus my uncle, who was tagging along for an extended holiday, on Bastille Day, July 14, and flew over Paris as the city exploded in colour and smoke, like a pyrotechnic hydrangea bush. It …

The Seasons Wheels

I love my friends, believe me - I rarely say it though - For us they have their uses - But they also deal their blows - Daily I try to act more upon my dreams - How bright a soul forgiven bleeds - How bright a soul forgiven bleeds — Hothouse Flowers

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness: A Bullitt train to the 90s

On the evening of March 4, 1996, I picked up my old mate Al and we drove through Hungry Jack's for dinner before the Smashing Pumpkins concert in Perth, Western Australia, and I say to him, 'What did you do today?' You know, as you do. He says, 'I went and bought the Steve McQueen …